ATLANTA — An Athens woman says she had no idea where her mother's remains were because of a financial dispute with a northwest Atlanta funeral home.
Willene Favors died on June 27 but it wasn't until this weekend that she was cremated by Hollified Mortuary. Favors' widow agreed to the cremation, but not how they would pay for it, which has led to even more problems for the family.
"My mother's ashes are somewhere here in Georgia, but I don't know where," her daughter Deanneane Williams said.
For two months, Williams' daughter and the owner of the funeral home, James Hollifield, made verbal agreements about the thousands of dollars it would cost to bury her mother.
“He said 'I need my money. Nothing's for free.' I said 'Well, that's not what you told us before you even went and picked up my mother's body. You told us that you were going to work with us,” Williams told Channel 2’s Nicole Carr.
“I said 'Well we need something in writing.' He said 'Oh we'll get all that stuff situated. We want y'all to focus on gettin' the money up and gettin' your mother laid out the way she should be. We're going to make her look like a Queen,” Williams said.
But when Carr spoke to Hollified, he said Williams “didn’t pay Hollified Mortuary not one dime.”
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Carr spent the day digging into state records to find out when Favors' remains will be released and uncovered that the funeral home has been disciplined by the state.
When Carr confronted Hollifield at the funeral home, Hollifield wouldn't come out to talk to her at first on Tuesday. Then he refused to show an expense contract Williams says doesn't exist.
"I don't have time to show you and deal with you because I've got something else to do," he told Carr.
But when he did take the time to invite Carr in, things went south because Carr asked about the state putting his business on probation.
“You taking up all of this time, coming up here with this bulls---,” he said.
Hollifield later came outside and told Carr off camera that he’s working to make sure his funeral director is licensed.
We found out about the business’ two-year probation for employing an unlicensed director when we dug into state records.
We also uncovered a March 2017 state board investigation revealing Hollifield Mortuary operated without a licensed funeral director for more than a year and records show there’s been no change in that status
We did find the funeral director current with his embalming license but not the director license that landed them the punishment.
The state says they can’t talk about the ordeal right now, but they didn’t know about this mishap until we alerted them.
The woman’s daughter filed complaints with the state Tuesday as Hollifield tells us he’ll release the woman’s remains to her for an undisclosed amount.
After our story aired, the funeral director called Carr and admitted his license lapsed during a cancer diagnosis. He says he's working to rectify it with the state. He also admitted there was no financial contract on file to confirm the terms of his verbal agreement with Williams.
Cox Media Group
